May 25, 2009

Now Health.com Being Joe Jobbed

A couple of weeks ago it was Fairfax Digital (Australia) whose brand name was dragged through the mud by a medz huckster who spammed as a Fairfax impostor. Today, it's Health.com whose brand is the target of a medz spammer.

The message begins:

Welcome to Health.com

You are now subscribed to the following email newsletter(s): Health's Top Stories

Here's what the email message looks like (the large image with pills is downloaded from an external site):

This spammer isn't quite as clever as the earlier one because he leaves the links to a Chinese web site in plain view, rather than hiding them in less transparent links. The Chinese domain was registered waaay back on Saturday. Other identification in the message, however, tries to make the recipient believe it comes from Florida. If you dare follow the links (risky unless you use bulletproof browsing), the destination (after a bit of redirection) claims to be the old faithful, Canadian Pharmacy—whatever that is.

Perhaps we are in for a stretch of medz (and other) spammers hijacking the good names of web companies in an effort to gain an ounce of credibility with recipients. The economy must be tough all over.

Posted on May 25, 2009 at 06:03 PM

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